Set Description:
Synopsis: This is a starter set of Batman issues from the Silver Age. The books is this set come from two other sets-our Batman (#101-200) set and our DC 80-Page Giant set. We currently have just 58 books from those two sets that, 43 of which are highest graded examples, with 19 books holding that distinction alone. No book in our set is worse than second highest graded.
Background: What can anyone say about this title? Batman's self-titled run is one of the most significant in the history of comic books and one of the most widely collected. It is the title that introduced the Joker, one of the most recognizable villains in the history of comics, as well as other major members of Batman's extended family including Catwoman, Alfred, Vicki Vale, and Mr. Freeze. It is also where Batman got his very first detailed origin, where the Batmobile first got its stylized look, and where Gotham City got its name. Most importantly, the launch of Batman #1 in Spring of 1940 just over a year after the introduction of the hero in May 1939, established Batman as one of the two most important heroes in the early DC stable.
The character Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Batman’s popularity led directly to the start of this self-titled run in the spring of 1940. Though DC initially launched Batman as a quarterly publication, it later became a bimonthly series through the late 1950s, after which it became a monthly publication. The original Batman series ended with issue #713.
Our Collection: We've never seriously collected Batman, as a super power of being rich, while perhaps more realistic than any other super-hero power, never got me excited. It’s a book that I find extremely inconsistent, which I would also say about Superman. One has no powers and confronts more ordinary adversaries, the other has no worthy adversaries, he’s just too powerful. So when I started collecting comics again about 20 years ago, Batman was not one of the titles we collected. But as we completed many of our initial collections and started expanding our comic collecting targets, we decided to try to collect solo titles of each of the JLA SA members, just as we did with all the Marvel Avengers. The problem was, which titles to collect, as with Superman and Batman they each appear in several DC publications?
Initially, we started buying World’s Finests, which featured both Batman and Superman. At the time, the leader in the WF registry was selling his books so that many of those books were available and much more affordable than Marvels or some other DC titles. We now have over 100 of those books, but we have never been sure where to begin or end that title. Moreover, as time went by, we started preferring the Batman and Detective covers to WF. Still starting a collection of either seemed futile so late in our collecting history. After all, the runs are massive and our resources are now more limited since my retirement. But then the Alfred Pennyworth books came to auction, which gave us the opportunity to jumpstart collections of both Batman and Detective Comics, especially after I sold my Buckhead house and reduced my debt.
It should be noted that we have zero intention of ever finishing this expanded set. Nor have we any intention of acquiring any of the early GA books, which have the highest registry points, so this is not and will never be a competitive set. Rather we registered the books here just to have a quick place where we could reference all our Batmans, which do come from two different primary sets.
Current Stats:
57/Too Many to Count LOL
18 9.8s-All Highest Graded
19 9.6s-13 Highest Graded
10 9.4s-5 Highest Graded
7 9.2s-4 Highest Graded
1 9.0
2 8.5s-Both Highest Graded
17 WP
31 OW/W
5 OW
5 Cr/OW
18 Single Highest Graded
42 Highest Graded
15 Second Highest Graded
11 Pedigrees
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